Frances E. Graye
Py's main character. Frances is the mean cyborg who lives on a teleporting island with her Thaumaturge girlfriend. Description Frances is a fairly average height, with slim hips and broad shoulders made even broader by her twin mechanical arms. She is a cyborg, with a large number of augmentations and replacements throughout her body. Most are internal, but both arms and a few panels attached to the upper portions of her spine are visible. Frances' skin is tinged blue, and anything pink or red on a human will be a deep teal on her. This is due to the fact that her blood is blue. It is a synthetic blood surrogate created to better suit the needs of her partly mechanical body, and carries away toxins as well as delivering oxygen. Also immediately obvious are her pointed teeth and very long, forked tongue (that she is quite fond of displaying). This is the result of an experiment that was more successful than intended. Frances has a Hydra tattooed on the back of her right shoulder. It is ruined by a large scar running through it, and most of it is covered by the metal plate anchoring Frances's arm to her shoulder. The Doctor has this tattoo as well, though it is intact. Personality A hot-headed romantic with a mean streak a mile wide, Frances has a tendency to put up a brash and aggressive front, and can easily come across as childish or unreasonably confrontational. While this is often how she genuinely is, there is a great deal more that she prefers to keep to herself. She is capable of being serious when the need arises, but in general she prefers to stay positive. If she is in a good mood and given no reason to be prickly, Frances can actually be embarrassingly friendly and genial. She likes to talk to people and crack bad jokes. She is prone to obsession, if some desire or objective catches her interest strongly enough. This, paired with her tendency to have a somewhat unrealistic hero complex when it comes to the very few people she cares about, can be extremely dangerous for her and anyone involved. It can also be a boon when something needs doing, as she is fairly quick to finish a task she is invested in. While she is capable of being very dangerous, Frances is best described as mostly bark, not much bite. It takes a lot to get her to resort to real violence rather than threats. She prefers not to risk getting hurt, and will try to negotiate or threaten her way out of a situation before using force. However, if she does choose physical force, she is more than capable of causing serious damage. She is impulsive, and often has unrealistic expectations of how something is going to turn out. Stopping to think is not her forté. Frances has very fine taste, and indulges when she can afford it. She is usually seen wearing expensive clothing, and her home at Avalon is well furnished. Frances is also an excellent cook and will seek out quality ingredients. She enjoys reading, and keeps books with her wherever she is. Frances can typically be found in her workshop. She keeps herself busy with maintenance on her cybernetics and Avalon's Void Gate, and will generally spend her spare time on side projects. She also helps out on the farm outside Avalon, usually at Requiem's behest. Likes * Tinkering with mechanical things * Reading * Good food, especially meat * Quality whiskey * Silence * The outdoors * Fart jokes Dislikes * Being cold * Unnecessary noise * Nosy people * Bananas Fears * Deep water * Death Early Life Born to a noble and well-to-do family, Frances had a very comfortable childhood. The Graye family were old money, and very established in the hierarchy of their country. She was privately tutored in history, language, and the physical sciences, as well as taught to play the piano. She excelled in the sciences, and took a great deal of interest in literature, becoming extremely absorbed in works of fiction. Stories appealed more to Frances than real life did. Following in the footsteps of her mother, Frances pursued the study and development of Artificial Intelligence when she was sent to a school for high-performing citizens. After a year of studying AI, Frances developed an interest in robotics and biotechnology, and ended up switching her course of study to Advanced Robotics, and eventually Biotechnological Integration. Through the study of these fields, she picked up a fair amount of skill in cybernetics, particularly with sensory inputs. This would later become her greatest area of expertise, and would earn her employment under an influential contractor. After only a short time working with the contracting group, Frances covertly developed a highly advanced precision robot, intended for use in the manufacture of consumer cybernetics. The robot was highly versatile and programmable, with a rudimentary AI that allowed it to adapt to most situations with efficiency and a near nonexistent error rate. This machine would later go on to be re-purposed for the installation of Frances's own cybernetics Arrest and Later Career Before Frances could complete her prized robot, a rival within her company stole her research and claimed the success for themself. Due to Frances's secrecy and the company's lack of internal investigation, she had no way of fighting the claim, and lost rights to the project. Frances, infuriated, made the impulsive decision to do something about it. Frances used her intimate knowledge of the robot's plans to program a virus affecting the models currently being mass-manufactured. When triggered, it caused the machines' AI to go haywire, and bricked their control systems. This move cost the company a huge amount of money and was a major blow to its reputation. Frances was careless in covering her trail, and it didn't take long for her to be tracked down and arrested. Following trials and jail time, the wealthy Graye family bailed her out, but essentially disowned her on the spot until such time as she had gotten her life and reputation back together. She found herself jobless and outcast for several months before being approached by an unfamiliar company, offering funding, at the cost of complete secrecy. Morgan to be filled in Avalon to be filled in Cybernetics and Augmentations Frances has an ever-increasing collection of cybernetic enhancements and augmentations, which she constantly adjusts, augments, or upgrades. She builds all of them herself, sometimes from scrap metal and broken pieces of robotics if she can't get her hands on anything better. Her internal cybernetics and the mounts for her arms were machined and installed by a precision medical AI, following Frances's designs and programming. She is currently unable to replicate this, and as such cannot replace any internal parts, as self-operating is too risky. External * Most obvious are her mechanical arms. Her original arms were lost in a lab explosion (with one being ripped off completely and the other taking several days to succumb to the deeply embedded shrapnel). These are a highly sophisticated hybrid of motor-driven cables and shape memory alloy artificial muscle integrated directly into her central nervous system. ** Each arm contains a compact sensor unit connected to pads on her fingers and palm, and a converter to allow the sensors to communicate with the truncated nerves in her shoulders. These are capable of sensing pressure, temperature, and texture. ** Her fingers contain a set of replaceable, retractable tungsten carbide claws. She favors hand-to-hand combat, and these are generally used in such situations. However, she frequently uses them for intimidation purposes, or to scratch particularly stubborn itches. * There are a series of articulated panels riveted to her cervical and thoracic vertebrae. These contain ports that serve a few different purposes. ** First and foremost, the largest port allows access to her heart without creating an incision. The same port can also be used to access her bloodstream, which is necessary if she loses a large amount of blood, is poisoned, or it simply needs to be changed due to toxin levels. ** The smaller port above this allows access to the small memory card wired in to her brain. Such implants are not uncommon among the wealthy in her country, as they are useful for storing and copying information. This is essentially a spare hard drive for her memory. ** There is another small port to either side of the large one. These allow access to the converter units in each shoulder. Internal * Frances's heart is mechanical, and has a fifth and sixth chamber separate from the other four. These are devoted to the coolant supply for her internal cybernetics. This is a viscous, sapphire blue fluid, and would be visible in her blood if a coolant duct were breached. She removed her original heart voluntarily, to test a promising prosthetic model. * There is a small power supply in the form of a compact atomic battery, positioned to the left of her heart. * Both kidneys have been replaced with a mechanical purifier. The originals were removed when one was destroyed by the same shrapnel that took her arms. * Her liver is augmented with a device for filtering toxins out of her bloodstream. This device is crucial to her survival, as many of the cybernetics create toxins as a result of their function. It likely also saved her life when a disgruntled local apothecary poisoned her with deadly nightshade. She abuses this device somewhat, in that it prevents her from getting alcohol poisoning easily. * There are a multitude of cables running alongside Frances's spinal column and throughout her body. These carry signals allowing her to control and monitor her cybernetics remotely, as well as allowing them to communicate with each other. These cybernetics are key to Frances's survival, but also pose a very real danger to her health in a number of ways. Her body continually rejects the cybernetics, so Frances must routinely take an immunosuppressant to prevent inflammation and rejection of those cybernetics attached to her biological tissue. They must be constantly maintained, as a failure of one or more of them could easily incapacitate or kill her. The large amount of metal also makes her vulnerable to magic or electricity, and can cause burns to the tissue surrounding it if she were hit by either (and a burn inside your body is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds). Lastly, the weight means she would sink like a stone in water. Character Relationships Requiem: Frances and Requiem are married in every sense but officially. They depend on each other for emotional support, comfort, safety, and good food. Don't mess with Req if you want to keep your face intact Morgan The Doctor Trivia * Frances was originally a shapeshifter, able to transform into an eight-limbed fire salamander when she was badly wounded. This was retconned almost immediately.